CNET News Video: Ford's first electric car zips onto the scene

CNET News Video: Ford's first electric car zips onto the scene

1:37 /
April 13, 2012

Ford, one of the world's largest automakers, has finally plugged in to the electric car craze. The Focus Electric will hit showroom floors this spring, but it remains to be seen whether consumers will get behind the wheel. CNET's Kara Tsuboi reports.

Ford wants you to kiss the gas pump goodbye.
In San Francisco, Thursday, it entailed its first electric vehicle, the Ford Focus electric.
It can go up to a 100 miles on a single charge.
This vehicle is very low cost to drive.
You could be looking at less than a dollar to do up to a 100 miles.
So about 1/8 the cost to drive of the vehicle which is not gasoline.
Ford claims it will only take 3 hours to charge the battery completely compared with the Nissan Leaves, 7 hours.
With electric cars, also green on the inside.
The upholstery and carpet is made from recycled water bottles and there's the equivalent of 2 pairs of jeans as insulation.
Some of the biggest buzz could be generated by Ford's partnership with Microsoft, allowing you to program the car to charge it times when electricity rates are at the lowest in your area.
There's also the my Ford mobile app that communicates directly with the car.
The Apple give you reel time feedback on you range and your charge down us, we have charge station locations so you can plan your day and find the charge station nearest to you.
We actually have an embedded trick planner.
It's still unknown whether consumers will embrace the car that needs to be charged all the time.
First off, electric cars are still very weird to most American then they go look at the price and they are rather expensive 'cause this technology is not cheap.
You can go as green as you want and you'll only get about 1% of the buying market and the rest will say not I'll give it lit service but I'm still gonna buy what I like.
The price will pay for being Green 40 grand before rebates.
In San Francisco I'm Kara Tsuboi, cnet.com for CBS News.